In the Space Between Chaos and Shape
by r4ven3
Summary: It's only months after the death of Ros Myers and Andrew Lawrence, and Harry finds himself on enforced leave.


_**A/N: Thank you to those who continue to leave reviews for these one shots of mine. I may already have mentioned that the one shot is my favourite fan fic story form. As reluctant as I am to stop writing them altogether, I'll only continue to write the occasional one shot for as long as I still love the characters, and enjoy the process of giving them life.**_

* * *

_In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance."_

\- Jeanette Winterson, _The World and Other Places: Stories_

10.06am - Thursday, June 10, 2010:

Harry stands on the platform, helplessly watching while his train pulls away from the station, already gathering speed. Even were he to run after it, he would be more likely to pull a calf muscle than to grab any part of it before running out of platform. So he pulls out his phone and calls his daughter, apologising for not being able to arrive at her place at the agreed time, promising to catch the next train.

"Just don't wander off, then," Catherine says, in a tone that suggests she already has his name down for aged care. "I'll be there to meet the next train. OK?"

Yep. She's been spending too much time with Angus's father, a man only a few years older than himself, and already needing around-the-clock care. Harry sighs, glancing around the platform for somewhere to sit. Perhaps he could people-watch. He'd always enjoyed that, but rarely found the time. Until now.

For the past thirty-five years he's operated at full throttle, with every minute accounted for, and barely time for thinking, let alone pursuits of pleasure. The idea that he now has time for deep contemplation is both a joy, as well as a curse, since contemplation of his own life always has him falling short. Perhaps a coffee will help pass the time. He heads towards a small coffee bar he'd spied on the concourse earlier, tucked between the street and the platform.

He'd only just taken a seat at a stool overlooking the street when he sees her, a vision of calm and beauty. It's apparent he's imagining things. Perhaps Catherine's warning had been prescient, an insight into what waits for him just around the corner. Harry is sure he's too young to be losing touch with reality. He turns away, and then back again, and she is still there, but this time she has seen him. Her smile melts the intervening years, along with the dull ache in his heart.

* * *

"Let me buy you a coffee," he says, standing to greet her as she approaches.

"Thanks. I'd kill for a latte."

Harry heads to the counter to order her coffee, their reunion behind them, and nothing at all as he'd imagined. In his quieter moments he'd believed that were they to meet again they would each be formal in the other's presence, with perhaps a quick kiss on her cheek from him, and a squeeze of his arm from her. Nothing dramatic, nothing passers by would notice; always restrained, their emotions tightly reined by convention and their difficult past. The reality of their meeting was that it had been unremarkable, even casual, as though she'd been away for only a week or two. They hadn't even touched.

By the time he returns with her latte, she has found a spare booth with upholstered seats either side of a table. They sit opposite each other, enclosed in their own world, surrounded by the quiet buzz of the coffee shop, outside which North Londoners bustle and jostle their way to who-knows-where.

Harry couldn't be happier. "I missed my train," he says, eyes on the cup of coffee in front of him. They'd often escaped into the prosaic, their personal bond too fraught, too delicate for them to ever address it openly. When he lifts his eyes Ruth is watching him. How he has missed those eyes, those large soulful eyes with which she'd always read him so well. "I was meant to be on the train north. My daughter invited me to spend the day with her. She lives with her fiance, Angus … in Springton."

Ruth's face brightens. "I'm living in the next village past Springton," she says. "I was planning to take the ten-o'clock train, but I got … distracted. The last place I expected to run into you was at a train station. It's not like you to ..."

"Rely on public transport?" Ruth nods. "I've taken leave -"

"Clearly not of your senses," she says quietly, and Harry can't help but smile.

"No. I'm on extended … _furlough_ is the term the new Home Secretary used. But that's enough about me. Tell me about your travels."

Ruth's face brightens even further, as she launches into a summary of her almost four years away from London. Time passes quickly, and she has only just mentioned her time in Greece where she'd met a Greek Cypriot doctor, when she checks her watch. "We'd best not miss the next train," she says, standing.

* * *

Harry leads them to two empty seats in the end carriage, where they sit opposite one another. He feels the need to maintain the momentum of the conversation they'd begun in the coffee shop. Although he and Ruth could always sit comfortably without the need for conversation, this is neither the time nor the place for silence. "Have you been back long?" he asks, once the train has left the station. After all, they have another forty-five minutes in one another's company.

"It's over a month now."

A _month_? "But .. you haven't ..."

"I wanted to contact you," she says gently, "but Malcolm was my initial contact, and he suggested you might need time before I … He told me about Jo, and about how Ros died. I know how important she was to you, so ..."

Harry feels a jab of irritation. _Malcolm_? Why Malcolm? Why not _him_? But he already knows why. Malcolm is an old friend. Malcolm is safe.

"I'm working with Malcolm now .. in his business," Ruth continues quietly, conscious of his discomfort. "He'd already advertised for a research assistant when I contacted him from Cyprus. I'm lucky to have a place in the country to live. Malcolm's cousin and her husband are living abroad for two years, so I'm house-sitting for them. I can work from home, but I visit Malcolm every two weeks." Harry knows there is more to Ruth's story of her time away, and while he is curious, he is also afraid there may be some things he'd rather not hear. He decides to give her the opportunity to redirect their conversation. "Will you be returning to work?" she asks at last.

Harry sits back, a heavy sigh escaping him. "I have no idea," he says wearily. "After Ros … after we lost her, everything was .. chaotic for some time, and I hadn't the energy to pull it all back into some semblance of shape. When William Towers became Home Secretary it was clear part of his remit was to tidy up my department, beginning with me taking an enforced leave of absence. My reinstatement will only occur if and when I'm deemed fit for work."

Ruth's expression is so sad that he feels the need to turn the focus back on her. "Did you … are you … with anyone?" he asks, wondering is it too soon to be asking such a direct question.

"What you're asking is am I partnered?" Harry nods. "I'm no longer partnered, but I was for just under a year."

"The Greek doctor?"

"Yes. The Greek doctor. It was his son who .. drew me to them both."

"His _son_?" And how old was this bloody doctor anyway?

"Nico. He was nine at the time … and motherless, so ..."

Of course! A childless woman being drawn to a motherless child; a theme as old as time itself. "You miss him," Harry says, almost to himself.

"Yes. I still miss Nico, but I had to leave them and come home. I had no right being there. I -." She quickly glances up at Harry, who is aware he's holding his breath. "One day I was in the market in Polis buying bread when I overheard a woman saying, `Cor, would you look at that!' Her east London accent brought tears to my eyes, so it was then I knew it was time I headed home."

He has to ask. He knows he has no right, but he has to know. He _needs_ to know. "Did you love him?" Harry's voice is barely above a whisper.

"Yes. I hated leaving him there, but he'd won a scholarship to attend school in Nicosia. He was so very good at Maths, so -"

"No, Ruth, not the boy. Did you love his father?" Harry leans forward a little, his eyes following her every expression.

"That's a .. direct question." She's clearly uncomfortable, and for a moment he regrets his impertinence.

"I need to know, Ruth." Even to his own ears his tone is needy, perhaps even desperate.

"So you didn't do as I asked … that morning I left."

"Which bit?"

She hesitates, perhaps hoping she'd not have to clarify her question. She lifts her eyes to his, her gaze direct. "I asked you to let me go. It appears you haven't .. managed that."

Harry turns to gaze through the window, seeing nothing beyond his own reflection. "You're right. I tried, but ..." and he can't finish that sentence. He can't tell her that there had been days when his memories of her had been all that kept him upright. The knowledge that she was somewhere safe, somewhere sane, and that maybe, just _maybe_ she'd one day return to him had been the fuel that had kept him going. He can't say that. It's not fair to her, this woman who had found love in Cyprus. He turns back to her. "Despite all my planning I missed my train today, and you got distracted, so missing the very same train. I'd call our running into one another serendipitous."

Harry watches her while she deliberately avoids his gaze. "I loved the child, and I wanted to love the man, but … with Nico going away to school, George and I wouldn't have lasted a month alone together. In many ways we were opposites. He was quite … judgemental, even unforgiving, while I am more ..."

"… flexible," Harry finishes for her, relief flooding through him.

Ruth smiles her thanks. "I feel bad about living with a man I didn't really love. He was good to me, and there were times when I ..." This time it is Ruth's turn to run out of words. She lifts her eyes to Harry and smiles her apology.

Harry nods with what he hopes she reads as understanding, swallowing a bubble of anger which rises from the back of his throat. _But it should have been me_, he thinks, as he imagines her living with this man, sleeping with him, pretending to love him. "Ruth .." he says carefully, "there's something I don't understand." He waits, but he can't say the words. All the while Ruth's eyes never leave him.

"You want to know how it is I could live with a man I didn't really love when I'd rejected you .. a man for whom I'd cared deeply," she says at last.

Her words hang in the air between them. How does she do that? How is it she can read him that clearly, even after almost four years apart? Harry nods, holding her eyes. For a long moment, neither speaks, the air around them charged with their shared memories, and the sentiments neither had had the courage to utter.

After several minutes Ruth drops her eyes to her fingers, where he notes she's picking at some invisible flaw on her skirt. "You have every right to ask that, Harry," she says quietly, lifting her eyes to his. "I barely know the answer myself."

"Then try," he says impatiently.

Ruth turns to stare through the carriage window, the landscape passing in a blur of shades of green. "I ..." she begins, "I can only say that I have always had difficulty in accepting love from those I truly care for. When it comes from someone about whom I feel ... ambivalent, I can ... accept it without question. With you .. the stakes were so much higher. There was so much more to lose."

"So you turned me down so you'd not have to suffer losing me?"

Ruth glances across at him, her eyes sad. She nods. "I know that must sound .."

"Insane. That's an insane way to conduct your personal life, Ruth."

"I know. You must think I'm ..."

"Yes," he says, "I do."

Again they sit in silence, both staring through the window while the train stops at a rural train station, and two elderly couples leave the middle carriage. The train is once again moving at full speed when next Ruth speaks.

"My mother told me ... a year or so after my father had died, that it was a bad idea to be with the person you loved because when you lose them, the pain is unbearable." Ruth lifts her eyes to his, but this time a gentle smile softens her mouth. "I'd forgotten that ... until just now."

Harry sighs heavily. Almost four years apart from the woman he loves, and all because her mother had struggled in the aftermath of her father's death. Bloody hell. "I'm sorry, Ruth."

"No. I'm sorry," she says quietly, dropping her eyes in clear embarrassment.

Harry can't help feeling they have both wasted almost four years of their lives, four years they could have, _should_ have spent together.

"I won't do it again," Ruth says quietly."

"Won't do what again?"

"Turn away from what it is I want."

She has as good as admitted that she'd wanted to have dinner with him a second time, but Harry can't help but suspect that it's already too late to mend what has been dropped, it's delicate form shattering, its pieces scattered across time and space. He doesn't know what to say, and is afraid that there is nothing he can say to heal their fractured past. He sighs heavily, his shoulders slumping before he sits back on his seat, turning to stare unseeing through the window. He is barely aware of the thickets and hedges and green fields as they fly by. As the train slows to enter a rural station, he turns back to Ruth to see her forehead puckered in concern.

"I hadn't meant to hurt you," she says quietly. Harry watches three teenagers as they jostle before leaving the carriage by the centre door. Only then does he offer Ruth his full attention.

"I know that, Ruth, but ..." He can't finish the thought. He is so afraid that their moment in time, their opportunity for a life together has already passed them by.

After another long silence Ruth smiles widely. "Casual clothes suit you," she says, her eyes taking in his blue jeans, polo shirt, and navy and red hooded parka.

Harry twists his mouth in one of his half smiles. "I don't miss the collar and tie. I suppose the absence of a dress code is one advantage of not having to front up to work each day."

"Oh, I don't know. We still have a dress code, but it's less rigid. There are still rules around how to dress when in public. I imagine you don't dress like that when you're home alone."

Actually he does, but he's not about to admit that to her. He just nods before turning once more to stare through the window. He is almost relieved when they leave the last stop before his own. The tension between them is almost too much to bear.

"Harry," Ruth says, leaning forward, and reaching towards him with one hand, but not touching him, "we still have so much to talk about. I don't yet know how I feel about anything at all. I was away for such a long time, and I'm still .. adjusting to being home again. Besides, it's easy to miss someone when they're far away."

_What does that even mean_? Harry is confused, and yet he's not yet ready to give up on her.

"Do you have paper?" he asks, drawing a pen from one of the pockets of his parka.

Ruth scrabbles around in her bag – a laptop backpack with many pockets – until she finds a sheet of paper, which she hands to him. He quickly scribbles a string of numbers before handing it back to her. "That's the number to my new mobile phone," he says. "Even Malcolm doesn't have it, so when and if you're ready to speak to me further, give me a call."

"But don't you want my number too?" Confusion is evident on Ruth's face.

Harry shakes his head. "I need you to want to contact me, Ruth. Were I to have your phone number, I'd call you the minute I step off this train." The train is slowing as it eases into the Springton train station. Harry looks out the window to see his daughter staring at him, a question in her eyes. As he stands he turns to Ruth. "It's been a joy to see you again, Ruth. I'll wait for your call," and before she can answer, he is at the door, waiting for it to open.

* * *

Harry doesn't look back, but hurries to Catherine's side to greet her with a quick hug.

"You're a fast worker," she says, glancing at the train as it gathers speed.

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you speaking to that rather lovely woman. The brunette."

"That was Ruth," he says quietly, turning to leave the platform.

"_The_ Ruth?" Catherine asks, hurrying to catch up to him. "The one who had to leave? The one who broke your heart?"

"The very same." Catherine's car is the only one in the car park, so he waits until she unlocks the doors before he climbs into the passenger seat. He turns to Catherine, who is sitting behind the wheel, making no move to start the car.

"So … why didn't you invite her to join us?"

"We haven't seen one another in almost four years, love. I don't quite know where we stand, if in fact we stand anywhere at all."

"That's ... sad."

"No, it's just that the train trip wasn't quite long enough. Another hour, and I believe I could have talked her around."

"So you came armed with thumbscrews."

"Only verbal ones," Harry replies.

"So, where's she headed?"

"Headed?"

"On the train."

"She's house-sitting in the next village north."

"Norton Heath. It's a pretty spot, and only three kilometres or so from here, depending on which road you take."

Harry can feel his daughter's eyes on him. Like lasers they bore into the skin of his neck. "What?" he asks, turning to look at her.

"You could visit her, or I could arrange for -"

"No, Catherine. We have to find our own way … in our own time."

"Which could take another decade," Catherine replies, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

"It won't. I gave her my mobile number, but I don't have hers."

"So she has to ring you."

Harry nods. "She has to make the first move, yes."

"Do you _know_ how confronting it is for a woman to call the man she likes?"

"About as confronting as it is for a man, I'd say."

"Touché."

They are both surprised when from inside his jacket pocket his phone rings. "Bloody hell," he says, as he takes out the phone and squints at the display. "It's a number I don't know," he mumbles, before answering in his usual way. "Pearce," he barks into the phone.

Catherine watches him as his face softens. "Ruth," he answers. "What a lovely surprise."

Harry is then temporarily distracted by Catherine opening the driver's side door, and mouthing the words: _Just checking__ the tyres_, before gently closing the door behind her.

"Sorry, go ahead," he says, "my daughter just not-so-discreetly left the car."

Ruth's light chuckle is like music to his ears. "I have something to ask you," she says, "and I wasn't brave enough to ask you to your face."

"Go on," he says, hoping she is the bringer of good news.

"It's just that Malcolm gave me two tickets to the opera. He bought them as a special gift for my birthday … a few weeks ago. I guess what I'm trying to say is … Harry, would you like to accompany me to _Aida_? It's at Covent Garden .. in a fortnight."

_Would_ he? It's as though the sun just emerged from behind a cloud. "Yes, I'd rather like that, Ruth," he says, conveying a calm he doesn't feel.

"It's Verdi, and I know you approve of Italian opera."

"That would be lovely."

"I wanted to ask you while we were on the train, but … I found myself acting ... defensively and perhaps harshly .. towards you."

_You can say that again_. "It's alright, Ruth," he reassures her. "You've asked me now, and I've said yes."

"I was hoping you would."

"And I was hoping you'd call me .. soon."

"And now it's your turn to ring me."

"I suppose it is. Look, can I call you back - maybe tonight? When I answered your call my daughter almost fell from the car, claiming she needed to check the car tyres. They looked perfectly fine to me."

He hears Ruth's light laugh. "We can't have her doing that. I'll let you go, Harry, and I'll expect to hear from you tonight."

"When I get home. It probably won't be until after nine."

"I usually stay up until eleven or so."

"We can talk some more then. Goodbye, Ruth."

"Goodbye."

Harry slides the phone back into his pocket, then taps his knuckles on the window. Catherine, who'd been pacing behind the car, returns to the driver's side, and slides back into her seat.

"I hope that was good news," she says brightly.

"It was. She asked me to the opera."

"And you said yes, I hope."

"I said yes."

"Which opera?"

Harry quickly glances at her, already knowing the direction the interrogation is about to head. "_Aida,_" he says quietly.

"Isn't that ...?"

"It is."

"Mum's favourite opera. She once told me that you took her to see it three times ... usually once she'd elevated you to Number One on her shit list. Won't that ...?"

"No," he says quickly, "it won't. That was then, and this is now."

"Good, good. So," she says cheerily, "when do I get to meet Ruth?"

"With your level of tact, Catherine, possibly never."

Catherine grins as she starts the car, and slowly drives out of the car park. "You'll need to take her to dinner before the opera."

"_Catherine ..."_

"What? I'm just reminding you .. in case you've forgotten the drill."

"I haven't forgotten .. the drill."

Catherine turns the car down the narrow road which leads to the lane on which she lives with Angus. "I'm happy for you, that's all. You need someone."

"I know I do."

"So when can I meet her?"

Harry turns to see the smile on Catherine's lips as she negotiates the corner. She's happy, and uncharacteristically, so is he, and it's barely noon. With a date with Ruth to look forward to, it's already a splendid day.


End file.
